DEGSON Win The Patent Infringement Lawsuit Vs. WAGO

Recently, Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court issued a civil ruling No. (2021)粤73民初891号, granted the plaintiff, a German company named WAGO to dismiss the lawsuit. Previously. WAGO has previously filed a complaint against Ningbo Degson Electrical Co., Ltd., Guangzhou DEGESONG Electrical Co., Ltd., and Ningbo Degson Electronics Co., Ltd. (宁波高正电子有限公司)  at the Guangzhou Intellectual Property Court, allegating the three entities of infringement of its ZL201811220969.4 patent entitled "Connecting Fixture".

After being sued, Ningbo Degson entrusted the associated institutions of Sunshine Intellectual Property Group, Sunshine Intellectual Property International Co., Ltd. and Beijing Yiju Law Firm to request for invalidation of the patent of the WAGO company. After examination of the invalidation request, the China National Intellectural Property Administration (CNIPA) made an invalidation decision No. 56038 on the patent, declaring all the claims of the patent ZL201811220969.4 entitled "Connecting fixture" owned by WAGO Company invalid. With the patent being declared invalid, Degson Electronics successfully defended its infringement litigation.

According to the No. 56038 Examination Decision of Request for Invalidation, the main points of the decision lies in that  ”if a person of ordinary skill in the art fails to identify, directly and undoubtedly, the technical scheme of the claims of the divisional application by combination of the initial application and all the common technical knowledge in the art prior to the filing date of the patent, the technical scheme claimed in the divisional application shall go beyond the scope of disclosure contained in the initial application and is not in conformity with the provision of Rule 43 (1) of the Implementation Regulations of the Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China”. The Claim 1 of this patent and the claims 2-11 which indirectly refer to the claim 1 are all in conformity with the above circumstances, therefore all the claims of the patent were finally declared invalid.

WAGO, a German company, founded in 1951, has more than 8500 employees worldwide and is an internationally renowned enterprise group in the field of electrical connection. More than 500 of its patents have been published and granted in China.

Ningbo Degson Electrical Co., Ltd., founded in 1990, and is a globally renowned supplier of integrated solution for industrial connection, and the first enterprise in Asia with a professional laboratory accredited by the United States UL and the Germany VDE. Degson Electrical ranks industry-leading in connection technology, mould design and manufacturing, automation equipment manufacturing, and is equipped with advanced detecting equipment and professional detecting technology, proficient in customization products, its products are best-selling in more than 100 countries and regions such as China, the United States, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. It provides high-quality products and professional services for the global industries such as industrial automation, instrumentation, electric power, transportation, shipping, new energy, elevator, lighting, security and machinery. It has been recognized by many Fortune Global 500 and industry-leading enterprises.

Degson ElectrIcal has been committed to technology and product innovation and creativity. It strictly complies with laws and regulations relating to Intellectual Property. It owns more than 200 published and granted patents. Although the number of patents is less than WAGO, they were not scared from the patent infringement litigations. They protected their rights and interests by affirmative defense and request for patent invalidation and finally won the case. At the same time, they also entrusted a well-known European law firm to fully assess and exclude the international Intellectual Property risks of the initial patent, so as to provide strong guarantee for the normal marketing and sales for global clients.

Sunshine Intellectual Property Group has more than 30 full-time Intellectual Property lawyers and patent litigation attorneys, and conducted more than 2,000 cases of patent invalidation, infringement litigations, administrative proceedings, trademark litigations and other kinds of litigations, including many cases with public impact such as China Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group (CSPC)’s levoamlodipine patent dispute, GREE Electric Appliances’ request for patent invalidation against AUX, Mobike’s request for patent invalidation, Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao (HZM)Bridge request for patent invalidation, Tencent’s "WeSee" trademark administrative proceeding, Zhongshan Yunteng’s trademark infringement litigation, Liebherr’s trademark administrative proceeding, Zhoukou " the Longevity Hill (长寿山) " trademark administrative proceeding, qualification dispute over the patent inventor of Olympic Big Footprint launcher, LR&RL’s patent ownership dispute, Sanju environmental protection’s unfair competition litigation, the United States CBI’s trade secret infringement litigation. Among which, Mobike's patent infringement dispute was selected as the "Top ten typical cases of patent administrative protection Beijing 2017" and the "Top ten cases of requests for patent reexamination and invalidation before the Patent Reexamination Board 2017". Jinyuan Maofeng’s patent dispute was selected as the "Top ten typical cases of patent administrative protection Beijing 2017" , and the "Top ten typical cases of cracking down on acts of patent infringement and passing off a patent 2017" by the China National Intellectual Property Administration, LR&RL Technology’s patent dispute was selected as the "Typical cases of the Intellectual Property tribunal of the Supreme People's Court", API and Huawei’s requests for patent invalidation of "Liquid anti-shake lens" and "Butylphthalide cyclodextrin or cyclodextrin derivative inclusion complex, preparation method and application thereof" were jointly selected as the "Top ten cases of requests for patent reexamination and invalidation 2020 " by the China National Intellectual Property Administration, The request for patent invalidation of "left atrial appendage occlusive device" was selected as the "Top ten cases of requests for patent reexamination and invalidation 2021" by the China National Intellectual Property Administration. Sunshine will set up an expert group including legal experts, technical experts, senior patent attorneys and senior lawyers for each patent dispute represented and conduct a comprehensive analysis and handling of the case, which is also a consistent manner of providing professional service by Sunshine litigation and  request for invalidation team.

Source: IPR Daily

Editor: IPR Daily-Rene